Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten and in my case underwear listening podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything, okay, coming at you not shirtless
Speaker 1: but extremely bundled up. Is it fair to say that, um,
Speaker 1: are we in south central? Would be like too far
Speaker 1: north to be out of south central Alaska? I feel
Speaker 1: like we're closer interior. Yeah, i'd say this is interior.
Speaker 1: I can say, I can say we're interior Alaska, and
Speaker 1: I'm not being like a melodramatic. On a lake, perched
Speaker 1: over a spear hole, it's about three ft of ice
Speaker 1: on the lake. We have a whole chopped through the ice.
Speaker 1: It's about three and a half by two and a
Speaker 1: half feet. Would you say, looking at a bottom, we're
Speaker 1: on about eight ft about eight ft of water. The
Speaker 1: hole we have in the ice is about the size
Speaker 1: of a big screen TV. Not like a guy that's
Speaker 1: like way into TV watching, but it's a big screen
Speaker 1: TV for a person who watches a fair bit of
Speaker 1: TV but not too much. What sort of become the
Speaker 1: norm I think for the American household, right? Yeah, But
Speaker 1: now then you walk into a house and you'd be
Speaker 1: like these models watch a lot of TV. Yeah, based
Speaker 1: on how big that TV is, this guy's watching too
Speaker 1: much of it. This would be like we got a
Speaker 1: hole about the size of Yeah. You appreciate TV, you
Speaker 1: respect it for its value, but you haven't overvalued it.
Speaker 1: And we're on a slope looking down eight feet of water.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a sandy slope. The slope peters off,
Speaker 1: some weeds are picking up, and we are spearing for whitefish.
Speaker 1: There's two species hanging around. We have seen that when
Speaker 1: you guys, uh. The first one he saw when he
Speaker 1: dropped that little underwater camera a humpback. We've seen so
Speaker 1: far to humpback white fish, and have seeing quite a
Speaker 1: number of round whitefish. They're about they look a lot
Speaker 1: like a mountain whitefish if you're familiar with those, and
Speaker 1: they're about like a smallish mountain whitefish, but not so
Speaker 1: small that you can throw it back. But there are
Speaker 1: better eating white fish in the mountain whitefish, and the
Speaker 1: humpbacks would be like a big lake whitefish. Is that
Speaker 1: fair brand? So far, we have put two of these
Speaker 1: whitefish on the ice, and we've also picked up lake
Speaker 1: trout in a big bourbon, fourteen pound bourbon. You wait
Speaker 1: him out a fourteen pound bourbon and that's to take
Speaker 1: so far today, right, A big smoking bourbon and then
Speaker 1: a in a laker. Probably the best bourbon of the trip.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely the best bourbon of the trip. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's yeah and so yeah, it's the middle of day.
Speaker 1: It's what one o'clock now, two o'clock. Yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: seven hours till prime time. Seven hours still prime time now. Um.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to introduce themselves and tell your name
Speaker 1: and how many years you've been ice fishing? Joe? Uh,
Speaker 1: Jo's ch z y h really? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: caught your last name. Joe's zich. Yeah. Most people call
Speaker 1: him Joe's zurch from where I don't know, because they
Speaker 1: just can't live with the zitch. They gotta be like,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be zerch joe'sitch. What where's your grandparents? Are
Speaker 1: great grandparents hail from? Oh? I got you. I can
Speaker 1: see that. And I've been ice fishing for twenty eight
Speaker 1: years probably how old are you? Okay? Okay? Bryce names
Speaker 1: Bryce Myers and uh I've only been ice fishing for
Speaker 1: about seven or eight years. Ever since I met Joe.
Speaker 1: He was the one that took me out for the
Speaker 1: first time, took you under his wing pretty much. So
Speaker 1: I'll get to why Joel's ice fish for twenty eight years.
Speaker 1: But why, uh what? What prevented you from ice fish
Speaker 1: and the rest of your life? Um? Originally from Boise, Idaho,
Speaker 1: and not a whole lot of ice down there to
Speaker 1: fish off of. So like a little south of ice fishing, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I think they do some ice fishing up north. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't drive that far to go ice fishing when
Speaker 1: I was living down there. So it's not like when
Speaker 1: you go into attack shopping boys. He just not, Um,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't see ice fishing gear, not that
Speaker 1: I remember. I don't think so, at least not around
Speaker 1: the Boys area when I was down there. But you
Speaker 1: were an angler, Yes, you grew up fishing, Yes. Did
Speaker 1: you grew up hunting? Um? Not as much? Mostly small game,
Speaker 1: UM birds, stuff like that, not a not a lot
Speaker 1: of big game. And then he became an you became
Speaker 1: a hard water angler after come moving to Alaska. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. Joe said, you want to go fish one day?
Speaker 1: It's that sure. I bought a cheap little rod and
Speaker 1: after that day went out. I bought myself an augurt
Speaker 1: An ice house and was hooked. And now here you
Speaker 1: are with a big pair of ice fishing bibs on
Speaker 1: working a tube jig down the hole. Tranlu in whitefish. Yeah, okay, Nie,
Speaker 1: uh the honest, But tell us and I've been ice
Speaker 1: fishing for I could probably still just until instead of
Speaker 1: saying in years, I can just probably give you the
Speaker 1: amount of days that I understand. Why did you not
Speaker 1: fishing Michigan? You guys are the only people I know
Speaker 1: I didn't fish. Dude, I don't know. You'd have to
Speaker 1: ask my dad that question. I'm not I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: blame my dad, but I'm gonna say that they're like
Speaker 1: it has to do with something with the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: my dad just wasn't a big fisherman, never has been,
Speaker 1: isn't now like almost skipped the generation. Like anyone who traps,
Speaker 1: hunts and fishes. Anyone who hunts fishes, anyone who fishes,
Speaker 1: who knows what else they do, right, But like, it's
Speaker 1: weird to meet someone who grew up in a hunting
Speaker 1: family who didn't fish, especially in the state of Michigan.
Speaker 1: But the Latvians probably eat a ton of fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, No I knew. I mean we would go out.
Speaker 1: There was a kalamazoo Um Latvian Hunting and Fishing Club.
Speaker 1: I think my dad belonged to it, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: we go out and visit there. They'd have a annual
Speaker 1: ice fish in derby tournament. We'd go out and check them,
Speaker 1: you know, meet them, but we never did the fishing.
Speaker 1: We've got there to say hi. So yeah, less than
Speaker 1: ten days on the ice, less than ten days as
Speaker 1: a hard water angler. Is that total? Or is that
Speaker 1: saying ten day days ago? Was your first time out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I messed around a little bit last year in Montana.
Speaker 1: What are your general impressions? Oh, I dig it. It's
Speaker 1: been It's been harder than I thought it was gonna
Speaker 1: be harder physically, mostly because I'm bringing kids along. And
Speaker 1: so I went on there one day to Kanyan Ferry.
Speaker 1: It's blowing thirty and by the time I had the
Speaker 1: hole to drill, my kids were like, all right, that's
Speaker 1: an unbelievab Yeah. I've since then, I've had people tell
Speaker 1: me like, yeah, if you're gonna go out there, you'd
Speaker 1: have to have a shact. Well, you guys, the right day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen it nice out there, but generally it's like
Speaker 1: windy enough where you're losing five gallon buckets right Like
Speaker 1: you leave a five gallon bucket unattended and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it's just gone. No, the ice is scraped
Speaker 1: almost clean, don't get snow on top. People come out there.
Speaker 1: It's so windy that people come out an ice sail.
Speaker 1: Where do you make like a little boat that has
Speaker 1: like basing on skates? Never see this? Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a windy as ice fishing lake right there. Uh Brant
Speaker 1: Brant Mixel ice fish in my whole life from the
Speaker 1: get go, from the get go. Um, and then I've
Speaker 1: been ice. Yeah, I've been. I'm forty four years old.
Speaker 1: I'veen I like sabbing ice fishing for forty four years.
Speaker 1: My mom and dad, I'll point out, for their honeymoon,
Speaker 1: rented a living ice shanty that was the ice fished
Speaker 1: for their honeymoon. So um, I was even even the
Speaker 1: egg and then the egg and the mixings, the mixings
Speaker 1: that went into producing me had a deep familiarity with
Speaker 1: hard water angland before they even came together and combined
Speaker 1: to make my component parts. Deep tradition in ice Angland. Now, Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys are from I would say probably what I
Speaker 1: think to be like the ice fish in this state Minnesota. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would tend to agree. I was flying in recently.
Speaker 1: I flew, Uh, I was flying until Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and
Speaker 1: on the flight over over Minnesota, we passed over some
Speaker 1: big lakes and it was right at dark, right at dusk,
Speaker 1: and you can see the lake just lit up with lanterns.
Speaker 1: It's little ice shin villages all over ice communities. Do
Speaker 1: you think it's mostly like a place like Minnesota where
Speaker 1: people really hit ice fish and heavy? Is it like
Speaker 1: is it because people are miserable and bored in the
Speaker 1: winter or do you think it's something else? Like do
Speaker 1: you meet people who only ice fish? Yes? Actually that
Speaker 1: they're not generalist anglers. I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: be very common for someone who ice fish is a
Speaker 1: lot to not open water fish. But I there certainly
Speaker 1: are people that like are dedicated ice fisherman that don't
Speaker 1: do much open water fishing. Yeah, it's like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: more associated with drinking. It's frequently associated with drinking, but
Speaker 1: it's also you know, there's some different styles of people.
Speaker 1: There's people that love ice fishing that I don't really
Speaker 1: care if they catch anything or if the fishing is good.
Speaker 1: They more care about the drinking because they want to
Speaker 1: just go drink on the ice because it's fun. But
Speaker 1: then there's people that like want to catch fish and
Speaker 1: try hard, but they often are drinking too. Not always.
Speaker 1: The roosts that bring it up is I feel like
Speaker 1: there's always been a there's a like in the non
Speaker 1: ice fishing world, which is a big world, okay, of
Speaker 1: people that don't ice fish. There's a perception of ice
Speaker 1: like like ice fishing had, say, a perception problem. Grumpy
Speaker 1: old man. Yeah, people aren't. Yeah, it could be that
Speaker 1: you think that did it. That's what I thought of
Speaker 1: before I even ice fished. It's a horrible representation of
Speaker 1: what it actually is. Like lazy anglers who aren't successful.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you are coming in, okay, we got
Speaker 1: a round whitefish coming in bad angle right now, I
Speaker 1: think you're just gonna have to You want me to
Speaker 1: wing it, let him walk, I don't turn into the day.
Speaker 1: I gotta stroke at him here, take it all right?
Speaker 1: He might come back, Yeah, come on, come once. Can
Speaker 1: you see him stiggling, jiggling, jiggling. No, I just watch
Speaker 1: his tailgalay, he was going back behind us. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was kind of like he wasn't like booking. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised if he comes back through. It seems like
Speaker 1: he was looking at the jig. But they just like
Speaker 1: to circle it some times. Man, I was just thinking
Speaker 1: we would do. It's been a little bit, we want it,
Speaker 1: no almost excitement. Would you would have taken that poke, Steve, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm at it. I'm in a different spot than you.
Speaker 1: I would have taken the poke. No one would. I
Speaker 1: now know me too, But no, I think if I
Speaker 1: was in your shoes, out of waited, thinking he might
Speaker 1: hook or whatever. But now I reviewed in my mind,
Speaker 1: I would have taken a hail Mary, just one more past,
Speaker 1: like duck hunting, let him get closer exactly. Oh so, anyways, Bryce,
Speaker 1: the first thing you thought was that movie Grumpy Old Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what I had in mind for not
Speaker 1: only Minnesotan's but I and so uh so it's so long,
Speaker 1: real quick they refresh my memory? How do they depict
Speaker 1: the actual angling in the and the like with a
Speaker 1: couple of old men sitting around drinking beer and not
Speaker 1: catching ship. But I feel like the movie doesn't. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: it's about one of them is like kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit potsy. And then it was like a lady
Speaker 1: and they both like her. She goes to the one.
Speaker 1: You figure she's gonna go for the other one gets
Speaker 1: a little piste, start pranking each other, putting fish in
Speaker 1: each other's trucks. That's right. It started sounding a lot
Speaker 1: like growing up. So when you got invited out of
Speaker 1: ice fish and why didn't you? Uh, why didn't you?
Speaker 1: You were like, oh, so this is what I'm getting into.
Speaker 1: I'm going out and it's gonna be two old men
Speaker 1: caught in a love triangle. It's not exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I just hadn't really considered going out ice fishing.
Speaker 1: I never had this stuff. I wasn't gonna just wing
Speaker 1: it and spending you know, three d bucks on an
Speaker 1: auger try to chip through the ice, Swiss a spud
Speaker 1: bar or something. But when you guys first went out,
Speaker 1: what was your what we're going for? Oh? It was
Speaker 1: just the stock fish or around anchorage the first lake.
Speaker 1: We went to his beer caned lake and just went
Speaker 1: out and just see what we can catch, and it
Speaker 1: wounded up being like not exciting, No, it was very exciting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We uh we didn't have any of the vax lars
Speaker 1: or any of the fish finders. Uh yeah, vex lar
Speaker 1: is like a it's a it's a it's a sonar
Speaker 1: esque apparatus that kind of tells you what's going down
Speaker 1: but down below your whole. But yeah, so we didn't
Speaker 1: have any of those, and fishing in the blind and
Speaker 1: even then still just we caught countless fish and uh,
Speaker 1: they're almost all dollies, aren't they. I think, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: dollies are the stock rainbows. And then you were hooked.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah. Right after that, like I said, just
Speaker 1: went out and started buying ice fishing stuff and now
Speaker 1: I've got my own arsenal because that's what I think.
Speaker 1: I feel like, like I was saying, like in the
Speaker 1: non ice fishing world, there's this idea that it's uh
Speaker 1: like super boring, and I think, but they're because they're
Speaker 1: looking at people that there's like these different kind of anglers.
Speaker 1: You have your drunkards, there's three kinds of ice. You
Speaker 1: had your drunkards, you had your hardcore fishermen. That were
Speaker 1: out to catch fish. And then you had your drunkards
Speaker 1: who were hardcore fishermen and out to catch fish. And
Speaker 1: I like associated with I knew about many of the
Speaker 1: the drunkards. I would see a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who were out there but uh, no real interest in
Speaker 1: catching fish. But it's like the social aspect of it,
Speaker 1: you know, and like to go drink on the ice.
Speaker 1: But then my in my father's social circle, there having
Speaker 1: to be a lot of the drunkards who are hardcore
Speaker 1: about catching fish. And they would be like, there's like
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who comes out on the ice.
Speaker 1: He sets up his shanny without doing any work. He
Speaker 1: just kind of randomly is out there, drills a hole
Speaker 1: through the ice, lowers his thing down, and that is
Speaker 1: that is where he's going to be. That's the weekend.
Speaker 1: And it's like he's just opening it up to fate.
Speaker 1: It'll turn out, it won't turn out. Then there's the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who goes out and drills a dozen
Speaker 1: holes before he does anything anything, and this man will
Speaker 1: be the man that catches fish because they're taken to
Speaker 1: it that same level of devotion and passion that what
Speaker 1: you think like the best open water Angler would take
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, it doesn't hold it be drilled on
Speaker 1: this lake so far, So yeah, takes a lot longer.
Speaker 1: Ice fishing, when you're trying to find depth changes because basically,
Speaker 1: if you want to see the depth, you gotta joe
Speaker 1: hole at every spot. Yeah. You know, my brothers talk
Speaker 1: about the way you like, the way ice fisherman perceives
Speaker 1: the body of water is so much different the way
Speaker 1: in open water Angler perceives it, because he says that
Speaker 1: he perceives the body of water just basically has like cylinders,
Speaker 1: Like when you're out on a lake in the old water,
Speaker 1: you kind of think of the whole lake. But he's like,
Speaker 1: I just think of it as that I basically drill
Speaker 1: my whole and I imagine that cylinder extends down to
Speaker 1: the bottom, and I just think about like that spot,
Speaker 1: and then I move over and I make like another
Speaker 1: like theoretical cylinder they're gonna think about. But you can't
Speaker 1: be that you're just checking out the whole place, because
Speaker 1: you're just like picking. You know, you can't troll, you
Speaker 1: can't cast, you're not like working a drop off. You
Speaker 1: just have to be where you're like committing to, like
Speaker 1: a specific thick spot and picking your spot is really important,
Speaker 1: but you have a lot less data to go off
Speaker 1: of to pick your spot because you're not passing over
Speaker 1: with a fish find or getting like a really good
Speaker 1: sense of where everything is. But brand your thing is
Speaker 1: like drilled millions of holes yep ice troll ice troll
Speaker 1: oftentimes send a camera down there to have a look,
Speaker 1: check out specific habitat up front, trying to find edges,
Speaker 1: micro habitat to find the spot on the spot, and
Speaker 1: then on top of that, you you need to go
Speaker 1: in there and take a poke. And here we have
Speaker 1: like the visual element where we have a big gass
Speaker 1: spirit hole and we're in shallow water, so you see
Speaker 1: all the things that go on that you otherwise won't
Speaker 1: be aware of. For instance, last night we had we
Speaker 1: were jigging for bourbon through a hole in the ice
Speaker 1: where we could actually look down and see because we
Speaker 1: put a light so we could look underwater, and had
Speaker 1: seven bourbon come up to investigate the jig. This is
Speaker 1: a big predatory fish that like will suck back six
Speaker 1: seven inch fish no problem. Seven of them throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the night came up and whipped and sniffed
Speaker 1: the jig or passed through under the jig. If you
Speaker 1: were fishing without the looking hole, you would get the
Speaker 1: sense that there was no activity and nothing at all
Speaker 1: going on. If you can have a vex lyre unless
Speaker 1: you have a vex llyr, explain the vex ler. So
Speaker 1: vex are basically a depth finder fish finder, um, if
Speaker 1: you don't have a camera, which we normally don't have
Speaker 1: a camera, so we'll use that to check all the depths,
Speaker 1: but basically is a circle and then will sound the
Speaker 1: bottom and have a real dark red line where the
Speaker 1: bottom is. And then as your jig your jigs normally
Speaker 1: like green Cane, your jig going up and down when
Speaker 1: you jake, you can watch her the light on it
Speaker 1: go up and down. And then as a fish comes
Speaker 1: in for like eel pole, they'll come up from the
Speaker 1: bottom generally, so you'll see a red line come up
Speaker 1: from the bottom, red line and then follow the jig.
Speaker 1: It's like a video game, match up the lines and you.
Speaker 1: But the thing about it's like it's like they're very responsive,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of real time. Like there's a delay
Speaker 1: with sonar, yeah, like a regular boat sonar. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: you really have it like a display screen, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like tracking your history. It's just like a
Speaker 1: real time portrayal of what's going on, to the point
Speaker 1: where if you lift your ride to work your jig,
Speaker 1: you're watching like an exact replication of where your jigs
Speaker 1: at in the time. There's no delay whatsoever. But I
Speaker 1: can't believe, like going my whole life and not ever
Speaker 1: using those things, I can't believe it either. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you like ice fishing. You don't have a
Speaker 1: vex flor. I don't know. I guess I just like
Speaker 1: it like a deeper old timy ways, just like when
Speaker 1: you're just fishing blind, you never know if there's a
Speaker 1: fish under you, Like with the vexil or, at least
Speaker 1: you know if there's fish down there or not at
Speaker 1: all times. That's like a thing that comes up with
Speaker 1: people griping about technologies like that, well that this is
Speaker 1: a very old school technology to like my grandpa had
Speaker 1: on it was it wasn't colored, but yeah, my dad
Speaker 1: had one that was like an LCD screen. Didn't work
Speaker 1: real well in the cold at all. There's just gray
Speaker 1: black and white scale. But you know, but you're familiar
Speaker 1: with the people that will say, oh, it takes all
Speaker 1: the challenge out of it, right, And I think like
Speaker 1: stuff like that can increase effectiveness. But a thing that'll
Speaker 1: always point out to people when having like this conversation
Speaker 1: about whether it's son a or whatever else, is you
Speaker 1: learn a lot more like it enhances your understanding of
Speaker 1: the environment and what's around you and how it all relates. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: so you're like, you like, it's not like you have
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, now that I have this device
Speaker 1: like a like a GPS, I know or not. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Now that I have a sonar device when I'm fishing,
Speaker 1: I can just turn my brain off and now I
Speaker 1: don't need to learn anything about fish. It's like having
Speaker 1: a sonar has taught me shiploads about fish because you
Speaker 1: understand like where they are when they're they're not hitting,
Speaker 1: when they're there and are hitting, and you come away
Speaker 1: with it. If you stripped it away from me, now,
Speaker 1: if whatever it became illegal to have it, I would
Speaker 1: be like, well, thank God for the time that I
Speaker 1: had with it, because I learned so much usable stuff
Speaker 1: about how fish operate. Yeah, how did jig? How fast
Speaker 1: do you when they come in and they don't bite,
Speaker 1: you go up, make them chase up, you go down
Speaker 1: to the bottom, they'll go down. What size jigs working? Um,
Speaker 1: it gives you a lot more information if you don't
Speaker 1: have a flash or you're just hoping something bites your jig,
Speaker 1: And some days that works great. But when you're going
Speaker 1: in of new lakes and find a new territory and
Speaker 1: I want to get something dialed in, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good tool. But there's like flasher we should explain
Speaker 1: as a synonym for the x L the brand name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: vex Lar's brand name. So when you like, when I
Speaker 1: was younger, though, if you like, if you were going
Speaker 1: to strike out to go ice fishing, heading out the door,
Speaker 1: it would be typically a very like rudimentary setup. So
Speaker 1: that was your child, Yeah, so well, no, it depends
Speaker 1: on the pends ont to what level we were going out.
Speaker 1: So like, for instance, if it was if we're going
Speaker 1: out to ice fish to lake you grew up on,
Speaker 1: you could go as simple as this. You'd have a
Speaker 1: bucket and in that bucket you would have one or
Speaker 1: two rods in your pocket, you'd have a chew tin
Speaker 1: full of maggots, you'd have a little film canister full
Speaker 1: of jigs and then if the ice was like six
Speaker 1: inches or less, you'd carry with your spud to chop
Speaker 1: a hole. And depending on the air tamp, you might
Speaker 1: not even have a scooper to strain out the ice chunks,
Speaker 1: and you'd be like our ice fishing like that, like
Speaker 1: basically nothing twenty bucks for the stuff, or you'd go
Speaker 1: out expedition grade fishing where all of a sudden it's
Speaker 1: you're introducing like we have thousands of dollars with the
Speaker 1: stuff with us right now alone. Yeah, So I mean
Speaker 1: it can like it like takes ice, Angland takes many
Speaker 1: different uh takes many different kind of forms, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think this kind of winds up being that
Speaker 1: like the level of passion you bring to it, or
Speaker 1: how much you're dying to catch a fish. But out
Speaker 1: here you guys are like I think that you guys
Speaker 1: doing Alaska is different than most people too, as you
Speaker 1: kind of do like a sort of like expedition ish outing,
Speaker 1: like explain where we are now. You don't have to
Speaker 1: tell like where we are, but sort of like talk
Speaker 1: about what it goes in to get to a place
Speaker 1: like this and be prepped up for a place like this.
Speaker 1: So we had uh several hours on the road and
Speaker 1: then about snowmobile run um into the lake, rigged up
Speaker 1: for everything for from start small end to fish up,
Speaker 1: so spearing whitefish, all that gear, jigging lake trout and
Speaker 1: bourbon and tip up fishing for bourbon. Yep. Now the
Speaker 1: ice fish like kind of like a main I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit about the different apparatus is
Speaker 1: that people used to catch fish through the ice. Like
Speaker 1: as a kid, we would mostly jig for perch and
Speaker 1: bluegills or pan fish croppy's perch, bluegills. But then you'd have,
Speaker 1: like for big fish, you have this thing called a
Speaker 1: tip up. And the tip up is what do you
Speaker 1: guys do you guys? Have you guys called you guys
Speaker 1: use the word dead stick for tip up? No? No,
Speaker 1: when you guys say dead stick, what's that mean? It's
Speaker 1: a rod that's not being jaked, just a piece of bait.
Speaker 1: That's your term for a dead that's a term for
Speaker 1: a dead stick. That's a love term for a dead stick.
Speaker 1: A rod not being jigged, just hanging in the water,
Speaker 1: usually next to like you'll be jigging a tube jag
Speaker 1: in one hole, and then you have this other rod
Speaker 1: that just has a piece of bait on it, not
Speaker 1: moving at all, and that's your dead stick. That's a
Speaker 1: term I hadn't heard. We would just call that like
Speaker 1: a rod over there with some bait on it or
Speaker 1: something like that. But like so a tip up is.
Speaker 1: This is what tip up is. And there's many different
Speaker 1: companies that make tippos, but a tip of b I
Speaker 1: know where to begin to describe a tip of spool
Speaker 1: line spool line that has a spool of line in
Speaker 1: which a spring loaded flag holds the line in place
Speaker 1: until a fish bites. Then the fish can free spool
Speaker 1: and the flag goes up, so you know you have
Speaker 1: a bite and you can watch it from a distance
Speaker 1: and you take Depending on your area's regulations, like in
Speaker 1: so Lakes, you could put a live fish on the hook,
Speaker 1: like not in Alaska. Nowhere in Alaska can't use live
Speaker 1: bait and freshwater at all anywhere in the whole damn state,
Speaker 1: which is weird because usually like rules here are a
Speaker 1: bit more lax. But like in the Midwest, most places
Speaker 1: you can use live baiting. Um The argument against like
Speaker 1: what they don't want when people prohibit live bait. What
Speaker 1: they're generally trying to prohibit. They're trying to prohibit you
Speaker 1: purposefully or inadvertently introducing species of fish in the bodies
Speaker 1: of water where they don't belong, so that you would
Speaker 1: like take some suckers or whatever, shin or sucker, some
Speaker 1: kind of fish, and you catch them out of one
Speaker 1: lake or buy them somewhere, drive to an area where
Speaker 1: that fish is no is not a native fish, and
Speaker 1: you fish, and you get done, and you dump your
Speaker 1: bait down the hole. And you just did what they
Speaker 1: call bucket biology and introduced a new species of fish
Speaker 1: into an ecosystem where it didn't previously exist, and a
Speaker 1: lot of fish get moved around that way. And also
Speaker 1: that you would introduce diseases into waters that you don't
Speaker 1: normally fish. But like growing up Michigan, like no one's
Speaker 1: gonna set a tip up. No one in their right
Speaker 1: mind is gonna set a tip up in Michigan that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a live fish on the end. So you
Speaker 1: rig a live fish, you hook them generally like right
Speaker 1: kind of under the dorsal fin, and you send them
Speaker 1: down under the water and you set your tip up
Speaker 1: up and so you get that thing set to the
Speaker 1: right depth if you want it, and we used to
Speaker 1: you know, we'd fish piked six ft off the bottom. However,
Speaker 1: you gonna set it up and then you position the
Speaker 1: flag so that when a fish hits the thing and
Speaker 1: starts pulling line, the flag pops up, and you might
Speaker 1: be able to set anywhere from two to six tip
Speaker 1: ups out and you put them all up. Everyone sits around,
Speaker 1: shuffles around on the ice, talks. A lot of people
Speaker 1: then begin getting drunk, and then eventually a flag comes up,
Speaker 1: and someone else flag flag and you run over there
Speaker 1: and lift the thing up with a hand line the
Speaker 1: fish up, and that is like, because the unknown factor,
Speaker 1: that is one of the more exciting things on this planet. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to appreciate how fun it is to
Speaker 1: see a flag pop until you've done it, and once
Speaker 1: you've done it, you love it. It's just it's like
Speaker 1: there's been times when there's just like a flag sitting
Speaker 1: in one of our sleds. We're not using it right,
Speaker 1: but that flag, for whatever reason, is popping up in
Speaker 1: the air. You just see a flag in the air,
Speaker 1: and that instinct in your body is triggered that you've
Speaker 1: developed over a lifetime of waiting for flags to pop
Speaker 1: uh as young as youngsters, we would sometimes like most
Speaker 1: of the rules on tipops are usually this varies, but
Speaker 1: generally it needs to be that you're like tending it
Speaker 1: okay and needs to be your like in your immediate control.
Speaker 1: How do they word it, usually closely attended, closely attended
Speaker 1: and not just attended, meaning you can't go set them
Speaker 1: somewhere and come back the next day to see what
Speaker 1: you caught. Generally, I'm sure there's exceptions of this, but
Speaker 1: generally you gotta keep an eye on it. So when
Speaker 1: the ice when we were kids, we did this now
Speaker 1: and then when the ice was good for ice skating,
Speaker 1: we would be able to set our tip ups way
Speaker 1: far apart because you could see them from a long
Speaker 1: ways away, and then you just would skate around checking
Speaker 1: them and it was like kind of like like hockey
Speaker 1: with fish, just moving around chasing tip ups. But typically
Speaker 1: you just like set them out, you scare them kind
Speaker 1: of out through the ice around your shanny and observe them.
Speaker 1: And that's tip up fishing, and what we've been doing
Speaker 1: at night for Bourbon Like bourb it's a weird fish
Speaker 1: because I want to cover here we've been taught with.
Speaker 1: It's a whole bunch of different names. Like did't already
Speaker 1: talk about different names from Bourbon? No? Okay? Like the
Speaker 1: official name is what brand? The scientific scientific name? Load
Speaker 1: of LOADA? How's it spelled? L O t A? Really?
Speaker 1: Load of LOADA? Were you're like? What you know that fish? As?
Speaker 1: Might depend a little bit on where you're from. I
Speaker 1: when I first heard of the fish, I heard of
Speaker 1: it as a lying but I became suspicious of that
Speaker 1: name only later when I learned about the saltwater ling cod.
Speaker 1: But people call him a ling even though it's a
Speaker 1: freshwater cod. People will call them and eel pout, which
Speaker 1: you've heard that in Minnesota. That's the main term. Someone
Speaker 1: told me it's the main term. I think if you
Speaker 1: live south of Highway to Yeah, once you get like
Speaker 1: the first time I ever heard anyone refer doing as
Speaker 1: lawyers was Lake of the Woods area, so like getting
Speaker 1: into closer to Canada, I think that term might have
Speaker 1: more of a Canadian origin. Yeah, I heard. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: interesting because my friend Doug Derhn, who lives in West Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: he had spent time living in Door Peninsula. They definitely
Speaker 1: call him lawyers there, he says, they call him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he knew that the guys there referred him as lawyers.
Speaker 1: The first time I ever heard the fish referred to
Speaker 1: as a lawyer was not far off Door Peninsula, but
Speaker 1: it was fishing out of Garden Peninsula in Michigan's up
Speaker 1: which kind of thumbs down southward. And the guys out
Speaker 1: on the peninsula call him lawyers. And as he explained
Speaker 1: to me, he's like, do you want to know why
Speaker 1: they called a lawyer? And he opened it up and
Speaker 1: showed me that it's heart sits right next to its
Speaker 1: vent or. One might stay like because they'd say, like,
Speaker 1: the heart's right close to the asshole. That's how you
Speaker 1: know it's a lawyer. So that was what they called
Speaker 1: lawyers when I first heard of the fish. Even though
Speaker 1: I grew up in a state that has some in
Speaker 1: the big northern waters, we didn't catch him where we
Speaker 1: ice fished. We never talked about him. I got to Montana,
Speaker 1: and they call him lying in Montana. Then they learned
Speaker 1: those bourbon and they learned that some of you boys
Speaker 1: call him eel pouts. And then there's another word. If
Speaker 1: you look in fish books. I haven't heard anybody ever
Speaker 1: call him is clench. And on the East coast they
Speaker 1: call him cusk. Oh, maybe that's it. Did we see
Speaker 1: clench though, I haven't never heard of cusp the East
Speaker 1: coast the usk like New Hampshire, that's what they call
Speaker 1: him out there. Either way, if you're from the south
Speaker 1: and you don't know about this, it's because it's a
Speaker 1: northern tier fish. It's the fish is distributed across the
Speaker 1: north so and around the globe and around oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like yeah, talk about that brand, Like what a circumpolar
Speaker 1: speaking circumpolar? So they're uh on multiple continents across the
Speaker 1: northern part of the globe. Other examples of circumpolar critters
Speaker 1: would be polar bears. Polar bears, well, brown bears, grizzly
Speaker 1: bears are circumpolar, were circumpolar. The blue muscle is circumpolar.
Speaker 1: I believe that the Northern Pike, but there's like some variations,
Speaker 1: but the Northern Pike. Find so a circumpolar thing would
Speaker 1: be like imagine a certain latitude band. Um, if you
Speaker 1: just take that latitude band and wrap it around the
Speaker 1: whole earth, you'll find that species are very closely related
Speaker 1: critters all within that same latitude band wrapped around the
Speaker 1: whole earth, so circumpolar fish. And you're saying too that
Speaker 1: they've been extra pated in places from Europe. I think
Speaker 1: there's been areas where they've been over fished in Europe,
Speaker 1: which is funny because in Minnesota, where you boys are from,
Speaker 1: you were saying that a guy might be want to
Speaker 1: pull a bourbon on the ice and leave it land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw that we did have um permanent ice jacks
Speaker 1: and relax. When I was younger, I remember seeing just
Speaker 1: piles of these things, and no one liked them because
Speaker 1: they leave their um their rat oreels down at night
Speaker 1: and then you pile would come fight the line and
Speaker 1: then tangle all the lines up when they're trying to
Speaker 1: fish for walleyes. Oh, so that's why. That's that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't like them. They're ugly and I don't think
Speaker 1: they're at least especially and as a kid, there was
Speaker 1: not a reputation for them being good to eat, and
Speaker 1: I never even tried eating one until I moved to Alaska.
Speaker 1: There's no walleyes here. You gotta ice fish for something.
Speaker 1: Figured out that not only are Bourbon fun to catch
Speaker 1: and much similar to walleye fishing, but they're absolutely delicious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not just that, but I remember, like guys that
Speaker 1: commercial fishermen have an ability in some places where they're like,
Speaker 1: had our commercial white fish seasons did, they'll even be
Speaker 1: able to market the bourbon. So the tricky part about
Speaker 1: bourbon the first time I started catching bourbon through the
Speaker 1: ice that I've never called a bourbon, not through the ice,
Speaker 1: but the first place we start doing we would go out,
Speaker 1: there's a lake, we'd go fish, We go fish for
Speaker 1: perch during the daytime, and then it gets to be dusk,
Speaker 1: and you would have like a narrow window of opportunity
Speaker 1: around dusk time to set up tip ups and catch
Speaker 1: the bourbon because their bite like perch, you cannot catch
Speaker 1: a perch at dark Like there's some fish that don't
Speaker 1: want to eat when it's dark out and some fish
Speaker 1: that don't want to eat when it's light out. Yeah, pike,
Speaker 1: the pike bite ends, the perch bite ends. You can
Speaker 1: get bass to eat at night. Bourbon liked to eat
Speaker 1: at dusk, even though it was caught a tanker at
Speaker 1: noon today. But you know what I'm saying, like a
Speaker 1: general thing, man, a general thing. So we've been doing
Speaker 1: is going out and at night out here on this
Speaker 1: lake and an interior Alaska setting up tip ups, which
Speaker 1: we explained earlier for bourbon and real quick, can you
Speaker 1: guys explain like the rags around, ah, how many lines
Speaker 1: you're allowed to use when and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is by water body in uh, most of the state,
Speaker 1: you're whatever the daily limit is, are allowed to put
Speaker 1: down that many hooks um on any water bodies where
Speaker 1: it's more so on pretty much any water body, you
Speaker 1: can fish two lines for any species of fish through
Speaker 1: the ice. Um. On places where you're allowed more than
Speaker 1: to keep more than two bourbons in a day, you
Speaker 1: can have as many hooks down as is the limit.
Speaker 1: But um, as soon as you do that, you're only
Speaker 1: fishing for bourbon. So then there's additional regulations about hook
Speaker 1: size and the bait resting on the bottom and different
Speaker 1: um criteria to try to I think limit buy a
Speaker 1: catch of other species. Yeah. That's the thing that I
Speaker 1: feel like we talked about this error day. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that's not well understood by people who don't hunt
Speaker 1: and fish the like how like tightly regulated in detail oriented.
Speaker 1: The regulations are around all kinds of like harvest of
Speaker 1: wild resources. So I'm trying to tike a way to
Speaker 1: approach like the thing you're talking about with hook size. So,
Speaker 1: like as Brand was saying a minute ago, you can
Speaker 1: fish when your ice fishing, just generally ice fishing where
Speaker 1: you're trying to hope to catch a variety of species,
Speaker 1: you can fish two rods. The minute you commit that
Speaker 1: you're only fishing bourbon. It's like, okay, now that you've
Speaker 1: committed the only fishing bourbon, you can jump up and
Speaker 1: put five. It depends on the lake. Yeah, on a
Speaker 1: lot of On a lot of lakes, it's five a day.
Speaker 1: Um in some areas and some like in rivers it's
Speaker 1: fifteen a day. Okay, So let's say let's just say
Speaker 1: we were in a lake that's five a day. That's
Speaker 1: an easy number to work with. So all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're like, no, no, no no, man, I'm only after bourbon.
Speaker 1: So they're like, okay. The regulations basically say to you, okay,
Speaker 1: since you're only catching bourbon, we're gonna make sure that
Speaker 1: you're only catching bourbon. At that point, they dictate to
Speaker 1: you that you have to have a hook with a
Speaker 1: three quarter inch gape greater than greater than three quarter
Speaker 1: inch gape, and your bait has to be laying on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the resting on the bottom. So what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do there is be like, Okay, if
Speaker 1: you're making a player where you're really just doing this,
Speaker 1: we're gonna allow you to have more lines, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna do added regulations on top of that to prevent,
Speaker 1: like you said a minute ago, from catching by catch.
Speaker 1: So when we've been setting up at night, we're going
Speaker 1: out and putting down like enough tip ups where it's
Speaker 1: hard to keep track comy tip ups you have down
Speaker 1: like where you're kind of wandering around the dark a
Speaker 1: little bit trying to find them all because the snow
Speaker 1: so damn deep. When you dig it out and drill
Speaker 1: a hole through the ice, you your your tip up
Speaker 1: sort of subsurface and they can vanish on you and
Speaker 1: explain what you do, like how you get bait and
Speaker 1: how you prep your bait for bourbon. Ah, we mainly
Speaker 1: you do a personal use. Uh hooligan, I'm gonna open
Speaker 1: the event. You're getting warm, should we turn the heater off?
Speaker 1: The back. He sweating that. Let me open this other
Speaker 1: one too? Did you pause it? No? What were what
Speaker 1: were you talking about? Oh? How we get a bait? Yeah,
Speaker 1: candlefish bait. Yeah. We go out dip net in and
Speaker 1: uh we're all right, so go ahead, we dip net
Speaker 1: our hooligan in the spring and package them some of them.
Speaker 1: About that for mix. People have no idea what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. They're a smell there, you know, some fair
Speaker 1: number of people probably familiar with like rainbow smell in
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes region. They're also a smell, but they're
Speaker 1: larger and oilier. Um, they're common. One of their common
Speaker 1: names is candlefish because you get so much oil out
Speaker 1: of them because if you dry them out, you can
Speaker 1: light them like a candle, which I still haven't tried.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not exactly sure which end you're supposed to light,
Speaker 1: but um um, I didn't know that. I thought it
Speaker 1: was because you could render out oil that was flammable.
Speaker 1: So it's mainly that. But you can, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you can dry them out and they'll burn like for
Speaker 1: an extended period of time off that oil. And like
Speaker 1: the they have two spellings. I'm gathering one must be
Speaker 1: the kind of official spelling, which is e U C
Speaker 1: h A L O N. Yeah, hooligan. Oh that's I
Speaker 1: don't think it's actually pronounced hooligan. I think it's pronounced
Speaker 1: you lican, youlicon. Yeah. But then there's a popularized spelling
Speaker 1: which is wholigan, like those hooligans who keep vandalizing my car.
Speaker 1: H O O l I g A n or candlefish
Speaker 1: and it's an anagramous fish lives out in the ocean,
Speaker 1: runs up the river's spawn and there's so many that
Speaker 1: I've never done this. I've done it for rainbow smell
Speaker 1: years ago a fair bit. But they're running up so
Speaker 1: much that you're just dipping blind. You're dipping a net
Speaker 1: blind into the water. Yeah. And they spawn in the
Speaker 1: lower reaches of silty rivers, typically social silt, right, So
Speaker 1: there are rivers that you don't really have any visibility
Speaker 1: in any ways. Um, there's some exceptions to that, but
Speaker 1: so it's mainly you're blind dipping. But when it's good, uh,
Speaker 1: you're getting good numbers in each in each swipe with
Speaker 1: the net, and it's just a small like a bait net.
Speaker 1: I don't know what twelve or fourteen inch diameter. Y's
Speaker 1: probably yes, probably about twelve I think. And you and
Speaker 1: you scoop down and go with the basket with the
Speaker 1: mouth and that aiming down river and swipe down with
Speaker 1: the current to catch them coming up. Did you ever
Speaker 1: when you're growing up, did you guys drop net for smelt? No?
Speaker 1: I did very little that. Um. I didn't really grow
Speaker 1: up in the Great Lakes area, so oh really, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess not. Yeah, you were way far away from
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, so uh yeah, like fishing rainbows smelt,
Speaker 1: we would dip net like what brands talking about. But
Speaker 1: usually site fishing now and then you have to blind up.
Speaker 1: Usually you have landed, you put up, you'd sink a pole.
Speaker 1: You'd wait out into a stream close to the mouth,
Speaker 1: or floating into the into the lake and drive a
Speaker 1: pole into the mud and hanging lantern from the pole,
Speaker 1: and you'd wait there and waiters and you see the
Speaker 1: shadows coming by and you dip them like that. Or
Speaker 1: you go out to pier walls and drop a thirty
Speaker 1: six by thirties centchions square net on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the lake near the mouth, and when schools would pass over,
Speaker 1: you'd lit that drop net up and catch them. And
Speaker 1: you could if you had it dial and had your
Speaker 1: kind of gear right adjusted to the sensitivity the fish.
Speaker 1: Like ofttimes you have to run pretty thin monofilment and
Speaker 1: have your mash be the right color where it matched
Speaker 1: on the bottom, or they wouldn't go over it. But
Speaker 1: once you got dialed, you could catch like extraordinary numbers
Speaker 1: of smell like that, like I was talking about one
Speaker 1: night we caught there's people catch them anymore news. I
Speaker 1: remember a night in particularly we caught eight five gallon
Speaker 1: buckets of rainbow smell. And they're very good to eat.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're good. But the candle fish or Jolians,
Speaker 1: they don't. They don't have this quite the reputation of
Speaker 1: rainbow smell. No, there are people that really like to
Speaker 1: eat them. Um, but they're oilier and uh, they're larger,
Speaker 1: so the bones are a little bit more prominent when
Speaker 1: you're biting into them, and they don't crisp up nice
Speaker 1: like when Danny cooks him, my brother cooks him. He
Speaker 1: cleans them like a smell, which you eat him a whole,
Speaker 1: just take the guts out. He fries them like a smell.
Speaker 1: But then he puts them on a on a cooling
Speaker 1: rack in his oven that sits over a baking sheet,
Speaker 1: and then he puts it that on three degrees and
Speaker 1: puts them in there for twenty minutes to drip all
Speaker 1: the oil out. And when you pull that thing on,
Speaker 1: that bacon sheet is full of oil. And then he
Speaker 1: eats the candlefish. And my wife, yeah, my wife anything. Man.
Speaker 1: My wife was like, not big into candlefish, but she'll
Speaker 1: eat you know what I mean, She's pretty good about stuff.
Speaker 1: And the first one I tried to eat, I cut
Speaker 1: a stick and tried to cook it over a fire,
Speaker 1: and after gutting it and everything, the as it was cooking,
Speaker 1: all the oil just basically squeezed it right off the
Speaker 1: stick and fell into the fire that greasy Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as the meat firmed up, it just squeezed it right off.
Speaker 1: So to get back around on the bait, you're primarily
Speaker 1: when you go out for Julians, you're primarily going out
Speaker 1: for bait, which you used for hall a bit and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, herring is a great bait, but um,
Speaker 1: there's not as many opportunities to catch it yourself. So
Speaker 1: you're looking at a lot of money, dude, it is
Speaker 1: so expensive. Buying hearing is expensive man. Yep, So this
Speaker 1: is a it's a great bait fish that um for residents.
Speaker 1: There's there's no limit on that fishery. Are non residents
Speaker 1: allowed to dip hooligans? No, not at all. Nope, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a personal used fishery, so it's limited to residents. Okay,
Speaker 1: so then walk through how you turn it into bourbon bait. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is pretty a labor process. I like to Brian.
Speaker 1: I like to Brian my bait Joe and Bryce. I
Speaker 1: like to use more fresh as frozen natural because you um,
Speaker 1: because aesthetically your performance. I don't like getting blue dye
Speaker 1: all over my hands. I think this brand's hands are
Speaker 1: blue or green whatever the hot colors for the day,
Speaker 1: or red some days. So you guys are going, you're
Speaker 1: like taking your candlefish freeze them in galon size ziplocks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the vacuum seal a bunch just in a
Speaker 1: single layer until I get sick of doing it because
Speaker 1: I think it keeps them fresher. And they thought out quicker. Um.
Speaker 1: But at some point you just gotta be done process,
Speaker 1: you know. And when you got fifteen gallons of that
Speaker 1: stuffs of hooligan, or however much you want. I normally
Speaker 1: just go with cooler not like half the size of
Speaker 1: a regular beer cooler, and I'll fill that up full
Speaker 1: and then that's formally good for me. That takes how
Speaker 1: long to net that? Uh, fifteen minutes sometimes okay, so
Speaker 1: it could be like hot and heavy. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's like we'll talk about Brian and bait for a minute.
Speaker 1: So I like to brian bait for a few reasons.
Speaker 1: One is it helps to firm it up. Hooligan can
Speaker 1: be soft. Um, so it's a the basic component in
Speaker 1: in a brine as salt um that helps to draw
Speaker 1: moisture out of the out of the meat and firm
Speaker 1: it up. And then I also like to add various
Speaker 1: cents and dies and um, mainly because I just don't
Speaker 1: have that much. I don't get to fish all that often.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's time well relatively like relative to how
Speaker 1: much you wish you fish, So I want to make
Speaker 1: a count when I go out. Yeah, I got you, um,
Speaker 1: but you're not a half assord Nope. And if there's
Speaker 1: any uh, there's any little thing that might help help
Speaker 1: you catch a couple more on a given day. I
Speaker 1: like to try it. So you're using salt the firm
Speaker 1: the thing up, and then you can buy it commercially
Speaker 1: produce like bait enhancements. Yeah, you can buy commercially produced
Speaker 1: brines that are already have a die in them, or
Speaker 1: you can make there's different recipes with adding different things
Speaker 1: into your brine to do the firmness. And then so
Speaker 1: you can make your own brine with your own materials,
Speaker 1: which is usually like salt and powdered milk, um and water,
Speaker 1: and then you can add hairy oil or die turn
Speaker 1: it whatever color you want um or buy the stuff
Speaker 1: that's already made up commercial. Now have you been Brian
Speaker 1: and helibut bait too? I have. I started doing that
Speaker 1: a salt, but I never do any of other stuff
Speaker 1: to it. It's what I like to do is brine
Speaker 1: it in a liquid brine and then drain it off
Speaker 1: the liquid and then put just straight salt on it
Speaker 1: and that will help keep it firm and keep it
Speaker 1: from freezing, which when you're out ice fishing, it's annoying
Speaker 1: when your bait's freezing. Um using rock salt or just
Speaker 1: regular like table salt actually use table salt, you know,
Speaker 1: at your cabin. See, we usually use rock salt, but
Speaker 1: I think that the finer salt helps the coat it better,
Speaker 1: um more surface area. So these hooligans then are blue Candy,
Speaker 1: Blue candyd He's already gone. He's already gone. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean he kind of came into the zone just enough
Speaker 1: so I could see him. And where did he come from?
Speaker 1: The deep? I just did a one eight back in there.
Speaker 1: How did they change in their attit? Shoot so much? Lately?
Speaker 1: We're in a real suck stretch here. Man, We're do yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're just not coming in and lingering little pass throughs. No,
Speaker 1: at least we know they're around. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about? TV earlier would be like if you're watching
Speaker 1: TV and just now and then the program flickered on, right,
Speaker 1: and then it flickered off again. That's what this is like.
Speaker 1: And it flickers on and you're like, there's like an
Speaker 1: action scene happening, and then it flickers off. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, what happened? Heartbreaking? So catching Bourbon? Now, do
Speaker 1: you how convinced are you that Bourbon liked to be
Speaker 1: down deep? I'm real convinced of that. But that you
Speaker 1: think that the evening, the low light triggers of Bourbon,
Speaker 1: He's gonna come up and hunt the shallows, come up,
Speaker 1: spend the daylight, uh, not moving around, not being very
Speaker 1: active in deep water, and then coming up in the
Speaker 1: shallow flash to chase bait fish and feed they you know,
Speaker 1: they they're a bottom. They relate to the bottom there.
Speaker 1: They kind of have that rough, rough fish look to them,
Speaker 1: maybe like a catfish. So they you could see how
Speaker 1: there'd be a perception that they're like this lazy, scavenging
Speaker 1: bottom feeder fish um, which is possibly another reason you know,
Speaker 1: slimy bottom feed or why they get that nicknamed lawyer.
Speaker 1: But they um, they're actually they feed mainly on live
Speaker 1: fish and there it's like the kind of lawyer who
Speaker 1: has a billboard in Las Vegas. In a fight, call me.
Speaker 1: But they're very aggressive. So and uh, except for last night,
Speaker 1: I guess under our hole they wanted to we found
Speaker 1: seven that were not at all aggressive. They're curious, but
Speaker 1: not aggressive. So it seems um, it seems like a
Speaker 1: kind of an unassailable truth that Bourbon liked to live
Speaker 1: down deep during the daylight hours and then as the
Speaker 1: sun goes down, they come up shallow to hunt. Do
Speaker 1: you feel that's pretty true. Yeah, I think that's pretty
Speaker 1: standard in lakes in particular, in lakes in particular. So
Speaker 1: what we do is to fish them. You're going out
Speaker 1: and at dusk setting up your tip ups in the
Speaker 1: deepest we've been running has been water up to as
Speaker 1: shallow as where that fish has to be bumping his
Speaker 1: head on the ice as he swims around, like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't really think there's enough room for it to fit
Speaker 1: under there. Yeah, it's like like, I mean literally a
Speaker 1: gap of twelve or sixteen inches between the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ice and the mud, and you have a bait
Speaker 1: land there, and there's fish that are swimming around and
Speaker 1: that narrow that narrow gap of free water hunting or
Speaker 1: spurting eggs because it's like the spawn time of year
Speaker 1: and you set them all up and then you either
Speaker 1: get like wham bam or just the stillness. Yeah, we've seen,
Speaker 1: we've seen both. So the first night we set up,
Speaker 1: by the end of the night we had ten ten
Speaker 1: bourbon big fish from what to what inches, Well, the
Speaker 1: top end would be fourteen pounds is the biggest so far.
Speaker 1: The small end to be what like three or four pounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there're going whitefish O skirt in the edge? What is
Speaker 1: he doing up there? Come on, lure him down. I
Speaker 1: think we gotta make no, no move to where no.
Speaker 1: I think we gotta move with the jig away from
Speaker 1: this beer hole. So when they skirt the edge, they
Speaker 1: come under us. I completely disagree because we've had somebody
Speaker 1: come up. We've had somebody come up. The smell of
Speaker 1: the thing not for the last couple of hours think
Speaker 1: about it like this brand Let's say, okay, I want
Speaker 1: to pay I wanna just just bring into the debate here.
Speaker 1: We haven't attracted basically, just have like a rig that
Speaker 1: you would use to catch a whitefish. Little what's that
Speaker 1: a little jig? Yeah, we have a little jig with
Speaker 1: a little flasher above it, and a little jig is
Speaker 1: tipped with the with the wax worm, and we're jigging
Speaker 1: it and in the center of the big spirit hole.
Speaker 1: And we've had quite a number of whitefish literally come
Speaker 1: up to the thing, oddly not bite it, but just
Speaker 1: come up to it and put their nose against it.
Speaker 1: Some come under it, some come along to the side.
Speaker 1: But it seems to be the last couple, I've kind
Speaker 1: of skirted around the edge. Brandt thinks that we would
Speaker 1: go a drill one right there. Yep, that's him coming back.
Speaker 1: Shoot it. I might side shoot him because he's not
Speaker 1: playing it, playing the ball with us. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a tough shot. Holy cow, he's still Is
Speaker 1: he gonna come back? He's just holding tight and he's
Speaker 1: standing there. We're not standing you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like if a hold? Can you see him still? Do
Speaker 1: you still see him? Yeah? I still see him? Is
Speaker 1: he looking this way? He's like right underneath you. Brand
Speaker 1: He's just messing around right up in the zone. Is
Speaker 1: he coming in? I'm not quite. Do you still see him? Yeah? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's right there. Try going down to the bottom with
Speaker 1: the naft the jig allway to the surface, one or
Speaker 1: the other. Try that just for a minute. He's gonna
Speaker 1: come right up to the hole and oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that in all the years of ice fishing.
Speaker 1: What's the fish doing? Now? I he he went away,
Speaker 1: He'll be back. I'm gonna laughing. He kind of eats
Speaker 1: that wax he has floating down there. I hope he does.
Speaker 1: That's a natural, nice natural presentation. Yeah, that's beautiful suggesting
Speaker 1: since they seem to be skirting the edge, he's suggesting
Speaker 1: going and drilling a hole over yonder, thinking that as
Speaker 1: a skirt the edge, it'll bring him right below the
Speaker 1: spear hole. I feel it would just make it the
Speaker 1: bee that when fish are investigating it, there's so much
Speaker 1: more out of sight. Where is he now? Oh? I
Speaker 1: see him here? You know what he's gonna. Oh, he's
Speaker 1: coming in. I might go for him. Oh you want
Speaker 1: to try and brant? Oh did he spook? He might.
Speaker 1: I don't think he would have spooked here. Hold that again,
Speaker 1: because he was at least up against the bottom there,
Speaker 1: which makes him like a little bit more pinnable. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying, like, put it far away, and maybe even
Speaker 1: if if we just put it like three ft away,
Speaker 1: we'd still be able to see it, but it would
Speaker 1: give it would let them. You know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: staying like five ft away from it, except for the
Speaker 1: ones that come up and smell it. Are the ones
Speaker 1: that come up underneath it, right, But that hasn't been
Speaker 1: happening lately. What was that top about how my idea
Speaker 1: is horrible? Yeah, but even before that bourbon coming up
Speaker 1: shoutout of fee. So yeah, so you can like lay
Speaker 1: by like a considerable bunch of poundage on bourbon meat.
Speaker 1: And I think about a bourbon it looks like we
Speaker 1: don't really get into what they look like. I think
Speaker 1: it looks like a frog and a snake made love,
Speaker 1: where you have a very bull It's fishy, for sure.
Speaker 1: It's like indisputably fishy, but has has bullfrog qualities to
Speaker 1: the head, and the body is that of a like
Speaker 1: an eel like snake like body covered in definitely snake
Speaker 1: headish snake headish do you snake when you feel them?
Speaker 1: They're not snake headsh But I think if you just
Speaker 1: looked at two pictures of the two fish, oh you
Speaker 1: mean like not a snake's head but a snakehead fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, they have similarities with like a bull fin two.
Speaker 1: And they got that fin, like the dorsal fin runs
Speaker 1: down the whole length of the thing. And then he's
Speaker 1: got like a bottom what can you think it is
Speaker 1: in the bottom is basically along his entire bottom. He
Speaker 1: also looks like a bow fin, you know that fish,
Speaker 1: dog dog fish or bofen A lot in common appearance
Speaker 1: with a bow fin, but flesh wise dramatically better. And
Speaker 1: they're covered in frog skin, Yeah, slimy skin, like like
Speaker 1: more of a froggish skin than you'd find on say,
Speaker 1: a catfish. When you go to cleanup bourbon, you can
Speaker 1: just make a cut through the skin and peel the
Speaker 1: skin off with a pair of players, and then you
Speaker 1: got all the tail meat. So from the vent back
Speaker 1: you can just kind of flay it off like a flay.
Speaker 1: From the vent forward, you you're peeling off big backstraps
Speaker 1: kind of. And the ribs are weird because the ribs
Speaker 1: don't curve down but just kind of goes straight out,
Speaker 1: so you're actually flaying off like a like a sizeable
Speaker 1: chunk of meat. And the way that you always hear
Speaker 1: it described is is described as poor man's lobster. White
Speaker 1: fish right underneath you, right underneath you. No, jake down,
Speaker 1: not see it. You'll find him. Oh all right, got him?
Speaker 1: This is a risky shot. Do you think he's gonna
Speaker 1: turn it? All? Right? Wait, that's a tough shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a tough shot. Kind of getting out of it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding me? Who did that? Not? Someone's
Speaker 1: going swimming. You know, earlier I was naming off all
Speaker 1: the names that there are for bourbon, which is endlessly
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. But when we're naming names, after I named,
Speaker 1: did some people call it poor man's lobster? No? I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about that. The reason folks call it poor
Speaker 1: man's lobster is because a sort of the preferred way
Speaker 1: to eat bourbon is to prepare herrot like lobster, where
Speaker 1: you take the meat and boil it like you're doing
Speaker 1: a lobster boil, dip it and melted butter um, and
Speaker 1: just eat it boiled. But the thing that I can't
Speaker 1: figure out is, you know you've had like you've been
Speaker 1: to salmon boils and other kind of fish boils, Like
Speaker 1: do you think that the bourbon Like if I, let's
Speaker 1: say I took a chunk of walleye and a chunk
Speaker 1: of bourbon and boil them both, do you feel that
Speaker 1: you would eat the bourbon and be like man, that
Speaker 1: is better suited to this preparation than walleye. I've often
Speaker 1: wondered that because there's not really many fish species that
Speaker 1: you cook like that, just drop it in boiling water
Speaker 1: for a minute, in pieces um it does have a
Speaker 1: lot of distinct lobster like text your flavor. You feel
Speaker 1: like it full on does? Oh it does. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know that he goes we eat
Speaker 1: them that way, but I don't know why we eat
Speaker 1: him that way because I just eat that works. They're
Speaker 1: called poor Man's lobster. Oh I think. I mean they
Speaker 1: taste like a saltwater fish more than a freshwater fish.
Speaker 1: So you feel that that's I'm definitely like, I definitely
Speaker 1: that's how I think about cooking them for shut man.
Speaker 1: Do you guys fry them too? Though I've never fried.
Speaker 1: I don't. I've never fried one of my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I fried them. Um, Usually I just don't have that much.
Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a novelty. And so it's
Speaker 1: just cool to cut them up into little they're like
Speaker 1: when you when you cross cut those backstraps, it's like
Speaker 1: little scallops and then drop those in the salty boiling
Speaker 1: water quick and dip them in butter. And I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's cool, and it's like, rarely have people that
Speaker 1: you're serving it to ever even ever had it or
Speaker 1: heard of a bourbon before. So our friend Randy was
Speaker 1: saying that bourbons were so despised where he grew up
Speaker 1: in Minnesota among wall fisherman that if you caught a bourbon,
Speaker 1: people would go drill a new hole as the the whole,
Speaker 1: as the whole the hole had been tainted by the
Speaker 1: presence of that fish. But like and Wally are good,
Speaker 1: But I feel like people like I think almost I
Speaker 1: think Wally are better than they actually are. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fishers as good as Wallet. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna get any in a fish house full of minies
Speaker 1: out and as no one's gonna agree with you on
Speaker 1: that one. But like, did they feel like the Wallet
Speaker 1: is just like, like absolutely good? I think what people
Speaker 1: like when it, like Wally is wal They don't have
Speaker 1: any muddy taste. You don't need to do any extra
Speaker 1: kind of trimming, and it's just clean, white, benign. Right.
Speaker 1: It's the hallibit of the fresh water. Meaning that's like
Speaker 1: it's a blank slate. There's no fish. Oh nice one.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. See it. Okay, okay, okay, Chord,
Speaker 1: I got you, I got you, I got you. I
Speaker 1: got That's not good. No, but it didn't spook him somehow.
Speaker 1: Podcast Chord went into the spirit man. He's kind of
Speaker 1: out of my zone though, he's going down. I got
Speaker 1: the spear three four ft in it, did you really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was a cock got shot yep. Oh, he's on
Speaker 1: here all right, poe him up. Nice work, that was shot,
Speaker 1: Holy mackerel. That's how we do it. Careful, careful, careful.
Speaker 1: There we go, got him. I was impressed. Impressive underneath
Speaker 1: underneath us. Yeah, that was like see my sports analogies,
Speaker 1: I'm they're so data. I feel like that was like
Speaker 1: Larry Bird, right, that was like a trick shot. There
Speaker 1: we go. That's impressive. Here you go throw them outside,
Speaker 1: starting to get decent numbers. Nice? Nice, nice? So what
Speaker 1: happened there was the embraser Bricey and Breser. You feel
Speaker 1: like you sucked him in. I feel like you're do
Speaker 1: you feel like you're in the driver's seat right now? Ah? Sometimes,
Speaker 1: But then again, I can't tell if I'm bringing them
Speaker 1: in or spooking them away, So you don't like you're
Speaker 1: not getting the sense that like you're uh that they're
Speaker 1: coming like eyeball on that thing. Ah. Some of them do,
Speaker 1: but some of them just don't really seem to care
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing here, But why are they showing up?
Speaker 1: Then here's what I'd like to no more than anything,
Speaker 1: if you let's say all of us each had a
Speaker 1: hole like this, would we all be seeing about the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like a total of random distribution of fish
Speaker 1: that happen to be passing through or creating a little
Speaker 1: micro environment, you know, with the jig and the light.
Speaker 1: The light difference, I guess probably doesn't look too No,
Speaker 1: it hasn't looked different from their perspective. And yes, either way,
Speaker 1: what this happened is whitefish came in. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit noncommittal. Um, A lot of guys were thinking, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve, he's a great man. I don't think
Speaker 1: he can pull this off. Uh, I think he's finally
Speaker 1: met his match. And in and in the end, I
Speaker 1: came through. That fish was far enough underneath us that
Speaker 1: I could not see it. Steve was leaning over the whole,
Speaker 1: looking under us and throwing backwards, and I couldn't even
Speaker 1: see the fish, nor that the spear stuck. It is
Speaker 1: how far under as it was. It was like a
Speaker 1: shot from three ten ten ft behind the three point line. Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly eleven ft. Uh, where were so Helmett? That
Speaker 1: those bit of action there we're talking about eating relative
Speaker 1: oh that I was saying. I was saying that a walleye.
Speaker 1: And this is not the bash on Wall because I
Speaker 1: love I like I like everything about Wall. I like
Speaker 1: catch them looking at him, love eating them. But I'm
Speaker 1: saying it's kind of like a hall a bit type
Speaker 1: fish where it's sort of a blank slate. It's like
Speaker 1: white flesh flakes, nice clean tasting. You can kind of
Speaker 1: do anything with it. No one's going to eat it
Speaker 1: and be offended by it, you know, but I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: to me, I don't know, you guys should describe it.
Speaker 1: You guys are probably eating more than I have. But
Speaker 1: never had walleye before in my life. Well, I've never
Speaker 1: even caught wall. There's only two Minnesota, because it's not
Speaker 1: a wall in Alaska. No, no, or I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're an I don't definitely. Where I was in
Speaker 1: the red in the reservoir systems, being in Minnesota and
Speaker 1: eating a lot of while I thought, I think that's
Speaker 1: what it tasted like because to me a little that
Speaker 1: I've eat it. When I taste it, I don't taste
Speaker 1: to me, then you know if you're if you're a
Speaker 1: lover of hell, but don't get mad at me. But
Speaker 1: to me, it's a little on the bland side. It's
Speaker 1: such a blank slate or wally. There is some flavor there.
Speaker 1: There's a sweetness maybe too. I agree sweetness. You feel
Speaker 1: the wallet has more flavor than hell of It, definitely,
Speaker 1: and I think it has a better consistency. I think
Speaker 1: you'd rather have a pound of Wall than a pound
Speaker 1: of hell of It any day. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know that I wouldn't, but I think if you went
Speaker 1: and pulled most Americans, there's not going to agree with that.
Speaker 1: But brand give your take on what Wall I taste like. Um.
Speaker 1: I think Johanna summed it up pretty good there. I
Speaker 1: think they're they're mild, so they don't have a fishy taste.
Speaker 1: They don't have a strong flavor at all. Um. They
Speaker 1: can take on whatever season means you want to flavor
Speaker 1: them with. But they have a bit of a sweetness
Speaker 1: and their firm and um as opposed to halibt that
Speaker 1: can get if you cook it like a touch too long,
Speaker 1: you can get a little dry or even kind of
Speaker 1: threaded like chicken can, whereas Whalleye fish straight down, straight down,
Speaker 1: Get him at the jig. Come on the nice round one,
Speaker 1: Come on eagle, nice nice right in that lift up
Speaker 1: gentle you got and then swinging this way. Nice shot
Speaker 1: with your reactions. Oh no, that was exciting to say.
Speaker 1: Oh about a miss. Oh look at that right in
Speaker 1: the nice shot you're stoned him looking he's out and
Speaker 1: he's not even flapping his tail. Yeah, bring him up.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the brain Yanna the plug us, nice shot,
Speaker 1: Nice shot. Man. Okay, first one, we'll talk up the lot.
Speaker 1: Be honest, is batting a thousand lifetimes? Next time we
Speaker 1: see John, this is gonna have a hat, says the
Speaker 1: dark House Sama. Nice shot. Okay, back to Wally because
Speaker 1: we're gonna get the whitefish edibility soon, very soon. Joe,
Speaker 1: do you have any thoughts on the flavor of Walleye. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, see what's saying. Most people would probably
Speaker 1: prefer hal that over while, but I'm with Brandt. I
Speaker 1: like the Wally more. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: because it's not as readily available to us up here,
Speaker 1: or if it's because I just like the texture better.
Speaker 1: You mean because in Alaska it turned around without bumping
Speaker 1: into a helibot for a bag of helibut place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so along that lines and how it matters what's
Speaker 1: most abundant. So when I was back in Minnesota ice
Speaker 1: fishing with buddy's this winner, I brought, you know how,
Speaker 1: a bit to share with everyone and salmon. And none
Speaker 1: of my Minnesota buddies who catch walleyes all the time,
Speaker 1: they all thought I was crazy saying that I like, well,
Speaker 1: I better than hal but it they say, oh, how,
Speaker 1: but it's better out of town because they don't have it.
Speaker 1: It's different, but they have a freezer full the walleye. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I say that the fish is approachable or like,
Speaker 1: people like it and it's a blank slate, what I
Speaker 1: mean is this is like, okay, take a fish like mackerel. Okay,
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it's too oily, too dark,
Speaker 1: too strong flavored. But there are people who are gonna like,
Speaker 1: know how to cook it and wind up loving it
Speaker 1: so much that it makes for the detractors. And I
Speaker 1: think with halibit or walleye, there's people who kind of
Speaker 1: I don't generally like fish, Like I'm not a fish person,
Speaker 1: But I like wallee, I'm not a fish person by
Speaker 1: like halibut because it's it's just a kind of a
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking down on it or being mean
Speaker 1: about it, but I'm saying it's kind of a safe
Speaker 1: mild like it doesn't inspire a lot of it doesn't
Speaker 1: inspire a ton of love, and it doesn't inspire a
Speaker 1: ton of hate, except for it inspires a lot of love. True,
Speaker 1: And I think bourbon falls right into that same category.
Speaker 1: It means what a mild white meat that um isn't strong,
Speaker 1: but has a good natural flavor in a good texture,
Speaker 1: in a good texture with whitefish. See, so hold on,
Speaker 1: come when I add something to this whole, Uh poor
Speaker 1: man's lobster. Oh yeah, poor Man's lost. When I was
Speaker 1: where in an old Tuscanini and be a great Colorado,
Speaker 1: That's where he got the name long tang Yanni because
Speaker 1: he manned the long tongs at the Tuscany in the
Speaker 1: grill and he had to set a long tongs and
Speaker 1: long tang yanni. Um, we're bringing a fish called the monkfish.
Speaker 1: And that was also that's got a good liver. Referred
Speaker 1: to it to as uh poor man's lobster. It was no,
Speaker 1: yeh monkfish liver monthfish flesh monthfish. I never heard that,
Speaker 1: and again I have. I mean I don't fit. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't fish for him, so we don't
Speaker 1: talk about him as much. But that's just yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never heard that before. Hey, Brent, can you touch on?
Speaker 1: Can you touch on bourbon liver? Kind of like start
Speaker 1: out by how they have a gigantic liver and proceed
Speaker 1: from there. Yeah. So everyone's familiar with cod liver oil right, um,
Speaker 1: And so as we've talked about, bourbon are the only
Speaker 1: species of freshwater CODs, so they have the same trade
Speaker 1: of a very large and oily or fatty liver. Um
Speaker 1: that it can be cooked in a few ways. It's
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a delicacy in some places.
Speaker 1: I think, um, in France, I think bourbon liver is
Speaker 1: popular freshwater bourbon liver of course freshwater, but freshwater fish
Speaker 1: liver um. And so I've just recently started doing this
Speaker 1: as I learned about it. But um, because you heard
Speaker 1: about bourbon liver eating or just because you're like, well, hey,
Speaker 1: it's got a big liver like a cod I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to cook it. I actually because I heard about
Speaker 1: it as bourbon. It was introduced as well. It's a cod,
Speaker 1: so it's similar. But the way that I've done it
Speaker 1: the last couple of years is just slice thin and
Speaker 1: then drop it in an ungreased frying pan and the
Speaker 1: dry pan a dry pan, and that um there's so
Speaker 1: much oil in that liver, it'll just create its own grease.
Speaker 1: It'll render out, and then you're basically just frying it
Speaker 1: in its own oil and it'll just it'll crisp up,
Speaker 1: real nice um on both sides. So you're just just
Speaker 1: kind of zapping it once you get oil in there,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to overheat that oil because I
Speaker 1: made that mistake and it smells fairly bad. But when
Speaker 1: you just just brown it, it kind of crispss up
Speaker 1: and it's it's not gamey at all. Like it's a
Speaker 1: real nice flavor and that just add a little bit
Speaker 1: of salt. It's good. It's good. Do you ever drink
Speaker 1: the oil afterward or is that too strong? I have
Speaker 1: not that that oil has definitely some flavor to it.
Speaker 1: There must be too um fish oil. Stories years ago,
Speaker 1: I was down in you know the species of asiatic
Speaker 1: carp that have gotten into the Mississippi drainage. It was
Speaker 1: like several. So there's big head silver that's kind of
Speaker 1: the primary ones, the flying carp being the silvers. And
Speaker 1: there's another one big head carp. And these are carp
Speaker 1: that they we're using to clean aquaculture facilities. So these
Speaker 1: are like herbivorous carp um filter feet, like yeah, filter
Speaker 1: feeding carp that they would put in these aquaculture facilities
Speaker 1: where they're raising catfish or tlapia, and they'd use the
Speaker 1: carp to maintain the tanks. And during flooding, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the aquaculture facilities will be like overrun with water.
Speaker 1: The carp escape and get out into the main Stem
Speaker 1: river channel. Now they're all over in the and then
Speaker 1: some of these stretches of the river. The primary biomass
Speaker 1: of fishing these rivers is these carp So there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of brew how about what to do with them.
Speaker 1: And there are some commercial fishermen that are operating um
Speaker 1: up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and I
Speaker 1: think some other branches of it as well, netting these
Speaker 1: carp up and they're sending them overseas to Israel for
Speaker 1: the filth fish and various other processed fish preparations, and
Speaker 1: people for a while, we're thinking, oh, if we could
Speaker 1: just catch them all, um, we'll take care of the problem.
Speaker 1: And so they would set requirements where they want to
Speaker 1: be able to catch all the carp out but not
Speaker 1: destroy the game fish. So they would come out and
Speaker 1: say like, okay, you can use whatever inch mesh net.
Speaker 1: You can use a four inch mesh net to catch carp,
Speaker 1: thinking that your game fish can be small enough to
Speaker 1: fit through the mesh. And they could go into these
Speaker 1: areas and pretty much remove and in very specific areas
Speaker 1: in certain situations, they could go in and put a
Speaker 1: real dent on the large introduced carp. But what they
Speaker 1: would find then is you would still have the same
Speaker 1: oundage of carp in the watershed. It would just be
Speaker 1: the poundedge would be comprised of much smaller fish brass,
Speaker 1: a much larger fish than just this ongoing problem. If
Speaker 1: you want to go read about it, you can go
Speaker 1: read about all the different thoughts in it. One of
Speaker 1: the most pressing issues around these introduced carp species is
Speaker 1: that they will get up into the Great Lakes Watershed.
Speaker 1: Now you know, of course the Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee. Right,
Speaker 1: these all flow, these all wind up flowing into the
Speaker 1: Mississippi fish. Fish spooked the jig just too aggressive? You
Speaker 1: drop it on the ground. Yeah, I was well starting
Speaker 1: to pick it up again, and then you guys started
Speaker 1: yelling fair. So I tried to set it on the bottom.
Speaker 1: And you'm intending that line a little bit for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe just hang it there and just stop digging it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I kind of like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like, well, like when when the
Speaker 1: fish comes in, dropping it to the ground like a
Speaker 1: quick movement, scaring the bejeebas out of him. So I'm
Speaker 1: off on a little bit of a side, don't hear about.
Speaker 1: It's gonna continue for a minute, because a big fear
Speaker 1: about these asiatic carp that have invaded the Mississippi drainage.
Speaker 1: Areas straight down that another one that's a different one.
Speaker 1: That's a bad angle. I might wait, No, he's not
Speaker 1: even a contender anymore. I have a shot at him.
Speaker 1: Do you take it? Well? You might, man, that line,
Speaker 1: that's a big angle. He's right blow us now, Oh,
Speaker 1: definitely dodged a was skidadlan. As that thing was coming down,
Speaker 1: he moved it. Sure seemed like a holy mackerel. I
Speaker 1: thought I had him. Who's up? Be honest? Is up? No?
Speaker 1: I'm up. So a fear with these asiatic carve species
Speaker 1: that have gone and invaded this river system is that
Speaker 1: they would get into the Great Lakes. And what I
Speaker 1: was saying is like, so the Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, like
Speaker 1: everything flows into Mississippi. Um the river that Ben met
Speaker 1: the writer Ben Metcalf calls the American Heartworm and flows
Speaker 1: out into the Gulf of Mexico, you know, in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: around New Orleans. So the Great Lakes, that whole system
Speaker 1: flows out through the St. Lawrence sea Way into the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: But years ago they made a shipping canal to connect
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes Watershed to the Mississippi Watershed. So you
Speaker 1: can now do what you would not have been able
Speaker 1: to do, you know a hundred years ago. Do you
Speaker 1: know when they dug that canal two hundred years ago?
Speaker 1: I don't wanna mess that up. Two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: you'd not have been able to go up to Mississippi
Speaker 1: and finagle your way into the Great Lakes. There's different watersheds,
Speaker 1: but they made an artificial connecting point. And they're afraid
Speaker 1: that these carps that are now in this river and
Speaker 1: the Mississippi drainage will make the jump by going through
Speaker 1: this shipping canal and invading the Great Lakes. And what
Speaker 1: they've done to prevent this from happening is the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers runs an electoral barrier. So there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of water there that they have, like an electrified
Speaker 1: water that's meant to prevent fish from wanting across that barrier.
Speaker 1: And that's what's what's that I said, no ship, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they have to keep. That's what they installed
Speaker 1: to keep these cart from coming in invading the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: So there's been a real thing like what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do with all these damn carp So people have
Speaker 1: been kicking around different ideas of how to make it
Speaker 1: a marketable And this guy had built this facility where
Speaker 1: he was going to start. Everybody was all, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's always talking about eating Omega three fatty acids, people
Speaker 1: like cod liver oil. It's a like you can extract
Speaker 1: fat from these cart So I went to visit this
Speaker 1: little mobile processing facility that he was beginning to test out,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to get I think it was like
Speaker 1: f D A approval to be able to make this
Speaker 1: carp oil and put it in pill form. And I
Speaker 1: go down there to see his facility and he's showing
Speaker 1: me he's got like a bottle of oil that he's
Speaker 1: extracted from his cart and you smell it smells just
Speaker 1: like cod liver pills, cod liver oil um. And I
Speaker 1: have a little sip of it and it was like
Speaker 1: pretty peppery and like very cod liver oily. And they're
Speaker 1: going and investigate this little like centrifuge type machine he's
Speaker 1: using to make this stuff. You couldn't have fit another
Speaker 1: maggot net thing, man. I remember being like this kind
Speaker 1: of turned offs. I felt a little bit like I'd
Speaker 1: been duped into eating maggot oil. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just like he hadn't been cleaning to think it was
Speaker 1: the nastiest thing. I don't know if that every guy
Speaker 1: ever got it off the ground, but I was like
Speaker 1: a weird case scenario with that stuff. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that was not weird, yeh do you remember up
Speaker 1: on now Nevak Island when we were fishing to i'm
Speaker 1: cod through the ice. Do you remember eating those livers
Speaker 1: dipped in seal oil? That was not bad? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the Eskimo of noon novak um like tom cod liver,
Speaker 1: which is probably another one that's very similar but very
Speaker 1: small fish. So we've covered bourbon up and down on
Speaker 1: eating I want to know, touch on eating whitefish, and
Speaker 1: this is like a one where they're not all universally
Speaker 1: appreciated because people have I feel like people have the
Speaker 1: same from a table fair stance. People kind of have
Speaker 1: a similar perspective of Mountain whitefish, which is the white
Speaker 1: fish living like anyone who's fished the West knows him
Speaker 1: as being a fish of the trout streams. But whereas
Speaker 1: rainbow try if you're fishing in the Rockies, you catch
Speaker 1: a rainbow trout, that's a non native fish that's been
Speaker 1: introduced into that system by you know, out of barrels
Speaker 1: unless you're on the Pacific Slope. If you're on the
Speaker 1: Pacific Slope, you can have native rainbows, but anything that
Speaker 1: flows east, absolutely you're fishing a non native fish species.
Speaker 1: When you're fishing brown trout, you're fishing a non native
Speaker 1: that's a European trout. So when people think they're in
Speaker 1: some pristine Western thing catching brown trout and rainbow trout,
Speaker 1: you're catching fish that got dumped into the place out
Speaker 1: of a barrel. It's basically like it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a make it's a little bit of a make believe fish.
Speaker 1: But living there alongside him is mountain white fish, which
Speaker 1: looks strikingly similar to the round fish that we're eating
Speaker 1: here and or catching here in Mountain whitefish are like
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't like them, like all the
Speaker 1: trout fishing. You've done your honest what has been So
Speaker 1: do your general take on what people think of mountain whitefish. Oh,
Speaker 1: they h eat him, like them those Minnesotan street the
Speaker 1: eel pout. I mean they I've seen guys just give
Speaker 1: them the death squeeze and act like they release them,
Speaker 1: to give them the desk squeeze. Throw him on the
Speaker 1: bank so the birds eat them. I mean, just no
Speaker 1: respect at all. Who eat them? Until I talk to you?
Speaker 1: When they do that, are they thinking that that it's
Speaker 1: gonna make more room for more non native fish by
Speaker 1: getting rid of that fish? Yes, like they don't want
Speaker 1: him competing with the They don't want the natives competing
Speaker 1: with the non natives. They don't. Yeah, well they don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The sport fish, the ones that jump right, the suckers
Speaker 1: get the same treatment. Yeah, we started eating them because
Speaker 1: we would take them in, brine them and smoke them
Speaker 1: and make like whitefish dip out of him. Uh. Chef
Speaker 1: Eduardo Garcia smokes them and puts them in empanadas. Little
Speaker 1: danker two. Yeah, he came in hot and crazy. I'm
Speaker 1: not evenna get ready for him. Him. He looked like
Speaker 1: he was running from a big bourbon. Did he come
Speaker 1: and go? He just came in like hen. That was
Speaker 1: just a pass through. Many tend the line for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it. Well it's under your boot right now.
Speaker 1: So that's good. So that's kind of like the Mountain
Speaker 1: white fishers. I think it's a pretty good fish, but
Speaker 1: it's weird because there's so much variability and whitefish. So
Speaker 1: like in the Great Lakes you have the lake white fish,
Speaker 1: which has a commercial market that is like a phenomenal fish,
Speaker 1: very white texture, but it's bony and you gotta debone
Speaker 1: it here. I think that a lot of one. You
Speaker 1: can cut a full on filet off of it. You
Speaker 1: can cut a full on yeah, you you can go
Speaker 1: in and take them and take a lake white fish,
Speaker 1: which your highly respected. So in the Great Lakes, lake
Speaker 1: whitefish are as easily as esteemed as walleye, perhaps more so.
Speaker 1: And there's a limited the Chippewa uh UM hold some
Speaker 1: commercial license that they use trap nets to kate to
Speaker 1: catch lake whitefish, and they and then they market the
Speaker 1: caviar as well, and they catch some big gas bourbon
Speaker 1: as bycatch in those trap nets, but other people target
Speaker 1: them and they have a really good reputation. You can flamem,
Speaker 1: but you have one line of pin bones that you
Speaker 1: got to remove on a white fish. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: excellent fried as sandwiches. They export them, eat them in Europe.
Speaker 1: Good fish up here. This is like they use allow
Speaker 1: them to feed dogs and stuff. That's not true, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't honestly know. I think that um. Historically, whitefish
Speaker 1: were an important source of food, uh primarily in the
Speaker 1: winter because it was a fish that was catchable in
Speaker 1: the winter, and I believe in that used as dog food.
Speaker 1: But with nets or traps um, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: much fish is used as dog food now just people
Speaker 1: don't run sled dogs and stuff as much anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean there's areas where people do I know that
Speaker 1: there's you know, certainly some fish is used to feed dogs. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think there's people that use white fish for it.
Speaker 1: What's the general like in Alaska, what's the general reception
Speaker 1: of the speed of of whitefish's table fair in Alaska?
Speaker 1: I think it's uh a little bit unknown. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, for one thing, I think whitefish is kind
Speaker 1: of overshadowed by all the other great tasting fish we have.
Speaker 1: And as far as like the sport side of things,
Speaker 1: there's just not that many people that get after it
Speaker 1: for whitefish. Um. There's some personal use or subsistence fisheries,
Speaker 1: like in the Chattanika you can spear them as they're
Speaker 1: spawning in the fall and people that people do that. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are there's some subsistence uh netting in some
Speaker 1: parts of the state for whitefish. Oh, huge bourbon, huge
Speaker 1: bourbon jig. That was he paying attention? He didn't He
Speaker 1: wasn't he was moving. That was a big fish. Holy cow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even see it. Yeah, he went right under you.
Speaker 1: Bryce was as big as that that that fourteen pounder
Speaker 1: pretty close that it was in that size class. Definitely,
Speaker 1: no way that was cool. Oh man, I watschall have
Speaker 1: seen it. They're out cruising our edge that were set
Speaker 1: up on? What's that? You got him on? Dirt? Just
Speaker 1: open that window? Oh you got him on, you got
Speaker 1: him filmed, he's got he's got him, he's got him
Speaker 1: on the hook. Oh nice yot dirt. How big is it?
Speaker 1: You're exaggerating, but it's a dandy dirt. So you don't
Speaker 1: need a flasher. All that talk about maxis I don't know.
Speaker 1: Good job dirt, that's a giant. Oh we're in here working.
Speaker 1: Garrett's out there just fishing. So right, so you were
Speaker 1: like had a camera aim and down making pretty pictures
Speaker 1: as is your job, and you were fishing, which is
Speaker 1: not your job, and all of sudden, whamole there he was.
Speaker 1: That's good work. Do you guys feel that when he
Speaker 1: went by that he was headed to his dad like
Speaker 1: he had a mission. He was on a line of
Speaker 1: that jing. You stole that fish from us. That's a
Speaker 1: nice fish. That's probably like a like like a twelve
Speaker 1: pound berd bit eight. So he went out and looked at,
Speaker 1: so he's not even close to the fourteen or nice work,
Speaker 1: nice work laying, buy some meals, all right, Shut the
Speaker 1: windows back to spearing, get the dark house back in action.
Speaker 1: Oh no, what are you talking about, man, Keep jagging,
Speaker 1: keep stacking them up. We'll be able to snag it up.
Speaker 1: So there's a book I'm reading right now called The
Speaker 1: Land of Feast and Famine, and it's about uh fur
Speaker 1: trappers who were working around Great Slave Lake in the
Speaker 1: I think in the thirties the twenties, late twenties, and
Speaker 1: uh Man for they're like because he's a guy eyes
Speaker 1: that had are traveling by canoe and they had to
Speaker 1: carry their sled dogs with them in the canoe because
Speaker 1: they're traveling into the trapping grounds. And then when everything
Speaker 1: freezes up, they make sleds and the dogs pull the sleds.
Speaker 1: So they spent most of their time in the summertime
Speaker 1: fishing whitefish with nets to keep you know, the dogs
Speaker 1: fed every night. And then when it starts to freeze
Speaker 1: up in the winter, when they know they can keep
Speaker 1: fish frozen, then they just net whitefish in order to
Speaker 1: feed the dogs throughout the winter. In order to feed
Speaker 1: themselves throughout the winter and also to use some for
Speaker 1: trapping bait. And these guys will go in this book,
Speaker 1: they talk about periods where they're going literally months eating
Speaker 1: nothing but whitefish cooked on a spit over a fire,
Speaker 1: in the intense cravings that you would get living that lifestyle.
Speaker 1: But he would say that the thing could get over.
Speaker 1: Like Stephenson talks about this too, is like you can
Speaker 1: get over salt. Like they are, taste for salt is
Speaker 1: an acquired taste. And you say, when you go months
Speaker 1: and months and those salt, you lose that feeling of
Speaker 1: wishing you had salt on your meat. And when Stephenson
Speaker 1: would travel into the village like Eskimo villages, they would
Speaker 1: just make sure to put because they were always worried
Speaker 1: about everyone eating their food, and they would put extra
Speaker 1: salt on their food because they know that the people
Speaker 1: who didn't use salt would never be able to eat
Speaker 1: even moderately salted food. And it was a way to
Speaker 1: make your food unpalatable to people to put a little
Speaker 1: bit of salt on it because that level of acquired.
Speaker 1: But this guy that was living for months on just whitefish,
Speaker 1: their cravings would be for red meat and like that
Speaker 1: would be the thing that they wish they had, And
Speaker 1: when wait and wait for was to get caribou because
Speaker 1: it would offset like how off you felt just eating
Speaker 1: nothing but whitefish. But the way I'll be cooking these
Speaker 1: white fish were catching right now is just brian them,
Speaker 1: hold and smoke. Yep, it's because it's the perfect fish
Speaker 1: for it. It's oily, it's like a little bit bony,
Speaker 1: but when you smoke it, it loosens the flesh up,
Speaker 1: so you can peel the flesh off and it leaves
Speaker 1: a skeleton. It looks like something you can put like
Speaker 1: in a museum display, like something styl faster than cat
Speaker 1: would be walking around like you just like the meat
Speaker 1: peels away and you have like the perfect little skeleton.
Speaker 1: All I do is like I slit them up from
Speaker 1: the belly to the chin, take out the guts, cut
Speaker 1: the gills out, but leave the head on. Trust them
Speaker 1: by putting a little string around the back of their
Speaker 1: neck under their gill, cover out their mouth and tie
Speaker 1: a loop in it and just hang them in the
Speaker 1: smoke or smoke like that. Freaking love those things. How
Speaker 1: long are you? Brian them for eight hours sometimes overnight
Speaker 1: like salt and the water salt sugar, Brian salt sugar.
Speaker 1: I'll sometimes put honey in there. You see people putting
Speaker 1: all like, oh a sprig of time. I just think
Speaker 1: that like that stuff is like it does not right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't pass into the meat. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think that people put a lot of stuff in fish
Speaker 1: Brian's that there's no way you can taste later. I
Speaker 1: put rum and fish Brian's, like when I do dry Brian's,
Speaker 1: I'll put rum in there. I've seen where you can
Speaker 1: slice up fennel and put alcohol on it and wind
Speaker 1: up getting like a fennel taste to it. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people put a lot of aromatics and
Speaker 1: stuff into into Brian's, the Brian fish, and there's no
Speaker 1: way that that flavor is carrying over in the necessary
Speaker 1: quantity where you can taste it above the taste of
Speaker 1: just like smoke brine and smoke fish. I think garlic
Speaker 1: I think you can get because garlic has a strong taste,
Speaker 1: but putting like a sprig of green herbs and I
Speaker 1: just I just feel like when you see that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, it's like, come on, it looks pretty, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. But Yeah, that that's how I
Speaker 1: would definitely go about cooking these roundies. And in lake trout,
Speaker 1: the other fish we have on the ice right now,
Speaker 1: is often criticized for being a tad oily, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those fish that, like some people are dismissive of,
Speaker 1: but then people that love it really love it. Matt,
Speaker 1: my brother this year smoked up some lake trout and
Speaker 1: brought it out, and my god, as the stuff gets smoked,
Speaker 1: I think it's a great fish smoked. Joe, tell uh,
Speaker 1: talk real quick about what your reluctance is about killing
Speaker 1: big lakers. So, I don't like to kill big lakers
Speaker 1: because they're a pretty long live fish and it takes
Speaker 1: them a while to get to the size to actually
Speaker 1: be able to like spawn. So and if you catch,
Speaker 1: say amid thirty inch laker, it's probably fifteen years eighteen
Speaker 1: years old, something like that, and I just I feel
Speaker 1: bad killing big fish like that, the old ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a fish yellow I rock fish. That's different. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's a different because it's a hundred
Speaker 1: years old, because I don't know why. I like you,
Speaker 1: who knows, I don't know what why there's a difference between.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the flavor. Maybe if the
Speaker 1: lake trout tasted as good as a Yellow I rock
Speaker 1: you'd be whacking them. Well, I don't know if we'd
Speaker 1: have a lake trout left at that. Yeah, if a
Speaker 1: laker was because the Yellow I Rockers is a phenomenal fish.
Speaker 1: If a lake was that good. Is it just because
Speaker 1: you're kind of like I don't really like them and
Speaker 1: they're old, and those two things combined makes me not
Speaker 1: want to kill them. I think so. And I've tried
Speaker 1: them before. Um, like you said, they're good smoke, So
Speaker 1: if we do get a small one and I have
Speaker 1: to keep it, I wouldn't mind trying smoking it. But
Speaker 1: the times I've had it before I tried to have cooked,
Speaker 1: I've just done it wrong, or the other person who's
Speaker 1: cooking it and didn't prepare it right. Maybe it's left
Speaker 1: you feeling why even yeah, why even give them the
Speaker 1: death the death stroke? I've pickled him and thought they
Speaker 1: were okay, But I think pickled pikes better. You like
Speaker 1: pickling northern is better? Yeah? Man, I just have never mind,
Speaker 1: Like I just don't mind like bait. I don't mind
Speaker 1: baked lake trout like smoked lake trout. But I feel
Speaker 1: like I have like a little bit higher tolerances for
Speaker 1: for gaminess or just yeah, like I just I kind
Speaker 1: of like, um, you know, I think I'm gonna saying, Man,
Speaker 1: I think there's some stuff there's like I don't think
Speaker 1: it's everything's job to taste perfect, right, It's just something
Speaker 1: that's it's like interesting the mass with it to experiment
Speaker 1: with it, you know, if something isn't absolutely perfect, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like that it was like an inconvenience, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I don't mind cooking something and
Speaker 1: then being like, yeah, you know, next time, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try this. I feel like that in and of itself
Speaker 1: is like a little bit educational warrants se messing around.
Speaker 1: There's some things that messed with like common Carp. I've
Speaker 1: messed him a few times, and in the end I
Speaker 1: just have come to I've done it enough and had
Speaker 1: enough disappointment where now I just don't feel like messing
Speaker 1: with common cart, right, And you'll still find guys that
Speaker 1: like think that common oh you gotta do this, and
Speaker 1: fish cakes, You're right, you can basically turn it into
Speaker 1: a completely other substance with the addition of everything in
Speaker 1: your kitchen. But I don't look at him and feel
Speaker 1: uh you know, I mean, I just don't look at
Speaker 1: him and see food. But I still look at Laker
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, man, that's like a food fish.
Speaker 1: All right? Brand you got any concluding final thoughts as
Speaker 1: we sit here and watch the the live screen TV.
Speaker 1: Oh it's there last night, I'm excited. I hope it
Speaker 1: turns on again. Yeah, we had a we had Our
Speaker 1: first night was on fire and last night was just
Speaker 1: you don't call it on fire. Relatively, I'm saying he
Speaker 1: a hole and didn't got one bit the tipops tipops
Speaker 1: are going off, and when I'm saying I'm fire on fire,
Speaker 1: I'm informing that by what happened the next night. So
Speaker 1: with two nights to compare to, I think we had
Speaker 1: one night that was on fire and one night that
Speaker 1: was on ice, although we still saw a lot of fish.
Speaker 1: So if something, some unexplainable thing or something that some
Speaker 1: smart person might know about pressure or moon phase or light,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, turn them off last night, hopefully that's
Speaker 1: which goes the other way to night, and I think
Speaker 1: it would be pretty fun. Every fisherman has their own thing.
Speaker 1: But I do feel, as do a lot of anglers,
Speaker 1: that I think the parametric pressure has major implications for fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my gut instinct is a high pressure system will
Speaker 1: shut the bite off on bourbon, on bourbon. I think
Speaker 1: you think high pressure shuts lakers down. Pressure fires northerns up.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, all right, Bryce, you in concluding thoughts
Speaker 1: brands concluding thoughts the holes we have a good night
Speaker 1: of fishing. Well, I I obviously agree with that as well.
Speaker 1: You're hoping for a good night of fishing. Yeah, something
Speaker 1: a little better than yesterday. Um, hopefully we can jig
Speaker 1: a couple more up tonight like the first night too,
Speaker 1: and we probably got another hour of spearing for it.
Speaker 1: It's too dark, we just throw that light down. Well,
Speaker 1: they just quit coming after a while last night last
Speaker 1: night we shined the light down and never saw in
Speaker 1: their white fish once it got dark. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they do. They go somewhere in laylow. Joe, I
Speaker 1: want people to appreciate the eel pout and not treat
Speaker 1: him like the Minnesota ice fishing. Whileye guys just kinda
Speaker 1: if you do get a chance to go out for him,
Speaker 1: try cooking it up because I think they're really good.
Speaker 1: Would you go so far as to think that you're
Speaker 1: gonna start the North American eel pout Alliance for the
Speaker 1: North American eel pout found I don't know about that far,
Speaker 1: but you do want people to know that it deserves
Speaker 1: your respect. Yeah, And it's not just a trash fish
Speaker 1: that swims on the bottom of lakes picking up garbage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any wild thing, any wild thing that you would be
Speaker 1: so lucky as to have that wild thing grace you
Speaker 1: with its presence, right, warrants a level of admiration and respect,
Speaker 1: whether or not you think it's a good thing to
Speaker 1: eat or not. With some invasive species like excluding that,
Speaker 1: but generally Yeah, to sort of wantingly um to kind
Speaker 1: of like wantingly destroy a native species of fish out
Speaker 1: of some misguided notion that you're gonna be like improving
Speaker 1: other fisheries by disturbing a system that has been intact
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of years. That you're killing this
Speaker 1: fish for no reasons somehow gonna like, uh, alter things
Speaker 1: for the better is a little absurd. Not you, but
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about a mug that would that would
Speaker 1: leave an eel pot on the ice. Yeah, out of
Speaker 1: disdain for it, Johnny, I don't have any concluders. Man.
Speaker 1: My concluder is just hoping more whitefish turn up for
Speaker 1: it gets dark. Yeah, it'd be nice, be nice to
Speaker 1: get a couple more shots each, but um yeah, i'd
Speaker 1: like to I can dovetail off that a little bit.
Speaker 1: And just I was thinking, as we're getting ready for
Speaker 1: the concluding thoughts here that I was thinking, man, just
Speaker 1: another species to add to the list of like wild
Speaker 1: game where people are like, oh, that thing socks socks sucks,
Speaker 1: socks socks sucks. And then finally I'm like, oh, trying
Speaker 1: to guess what donet suck actually break? And I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, like, make a short list, and then I'm
Speaker 1: counting off in my head. I'm like, well, I've heard
Speaker 1: that about elk. I've probably heard that about deer and
Speaker 1: moves and candle and animal and bears, mountain lions, and
Speaker 1: by golly, if like some who are these people that,
Speaker 1: how however long ago like started this thing where they
Speaker 1: were hunters and fishermen, they were sportsmen, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're like, you know, not like that, and
Speaker 1: to eat them it's gonna start saying they suck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was some sort of like dramatic shift
Speaker 1: that came out of having too many chickens growing. For him,
Speaker 1: it was like a thing that it came out of.
Speaker 1: It came out of being spoiled by abundance of other
Speaker 1: stuff that people can start to have, like disdain for
Speaker 1: or negative feelings about the resources. Yeah. So my concluding
Speaker 1: thought is, next time you hear someone tell you that
Speaker 1: something so and so it is no good to eat,
Speaker 1: try it. Oh, find a good recipe. Yeah, if I
Speaker 1: didn't eat everything that someone told me it was no
Speaker 1: good to eat, Yeah, you you just scratch off of
Speaker 1: the wild harvest out there. All right, that's all. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining